Bug 85229 – mozilla-*: "Save Link As..." Status Bar Spoofing Weakness

• Product: Gentoo Security
• Status: RESOLVED UPSTREAM

[Description Jean-François Brunette (RETIRED) 2005-03-14 09:07:55 UTC]

Description:
bitlance winter has discovered a weakness in Firefox, which can be exploited by malicious people to trick users into saving malicious files by obfuscating URLs.

The status bar cannot be manipulated via script code in the default settings. However, it is still possible to display an incorrect URL in the status bar when hovering the mouse over a link, right clicking, and choosing "Save Link As...".

This can be exploited by including a nested link in a table inside a link.

Example:
<a href="[TRUSTED_URL]">
<table><tr><td>
<a href="[MALICIOUS_URL]">download
</a>
</td></tr></table>
</a>

The weakness has been confirmed in version 1.0.1. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution:
Never save files via untrusted sources.

Other References:
SA13015:
http://secunia.com/advisories/13015/

[Comment 1 Thierry Carrez (RETIRED) 2005-03-15 02:11:53 UTC]

Can't find upstream bug (yet)

Regrouping all those issues as a single bug, as they are the same vulnerability (we'll create separate tracker bugs for each product when a new versions batch will be set to fix it).

[Comment 2 Thierry Carrez (RETIRED) 2005-03-15 02:12:55 UTC]

*** Bug 85230 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Comment 3 Thierry Carrez (RETIRED) 2005-03-15 02:13:13 UTC]

*** Bug 85231 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Comment 4 Thierry Carrez (RETIRED) 2005-04-16 04:30:29 UTC]

This bug is not really exploitable to do anything, and Mozilla apparently agrees with us since they did not fix it in their recent releases. I propose to close it, reopen if you disagree.